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MEDLIN Johnnv R From: BLANCHARD Bob C Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 10:56 AM To: MEDLIN Johnny R Subject: Notes for our discussion Johnny, you've asked me to draw up a list of important things that are missing or broken within the new POS web site in preparation for your meeting with ISD staff this afternoon. To put this in the most helpful way in this situation, I feel I need to share some general observations about the site and about the difference in perspective between ISD and POS on the site. I will try to be concise. It seems clear to me that ISD's objectives in creating a web site are different than those of POS. One issue that I think will be crucial to address in order to resolve "what's wrong" with our site, and to give us the best basis on which to move forward in "fixing" the site, will be to understand those differences. It will be important to identify a set of objectives that both POS and ISD can agree upon, or at least agree to allow to coexist as we work together to rebuild the site. What are our objectives for a web site? I believe it is to create a pleasing marketing tool that reflects all that is important and attractive within our system of parks and open spaces, and to make information about that system easy to find and interesting to view. From some of Randy's comments, it seems that ISD's main objectives for a web site involve making transactional services available to the public. He said, " Our site is not a billboard for Eugene, it is a source of information and services." I may be wrong, but I believe the POS perspective would be that our web site is something like a billboard for parks and open space within Eugene. Fortunately, these objectives are not mutually exclusive. We can both deliver information and services, and create an aesthetically pleasing marketing tool for POS. Our present site was created under very tight timelines that did not allow for meeting both objectives. I believe we now have more "breathing room" to go back and make our site more aesthetically attractive and also improve navigability. But some basic changes will be necessary: - to make some important content items available to the public via direct links, both from within the site and by printed materials, it will be necessary to create actual pages for them rather than surface them through adaptive portlets. This need is widespread in my opinion, and may be the single biggest change needed. - to make some graphics readable, such as the park maps, we would need to change to a two - column page layout to give us the space to enlarge them as they were on our prior site. This change would involve replacing many of the adaptive portlets with other navigational structures. - to restore the appealing graphical look to our site, it will be necessary to put back the banner photos (placed in "content canvas" portlets, in portal -ese) on our pages, as well as adding back the many photos that were in our former site. I believe these are supported by ISD, and should just be a matter of time and effort. There are probably other important categories of change that would benefit our site, but I'm running short of time to compile them. On a closing note, I believe that it would be important to repair some relationships among those involved in this project that were damaged in the hectic time leading up to the portal site going live. I am committed to doing my part to restore those, and I look forward to helping create an ongoing positive work environment within which we can work together to achieve our goals for our web site.